Chapter 33 *

Chapter 33 *
Emery’s POV
Logan's SUV had been parked at the edge of the Remington pack house grounds for longer than it needed to be.
I didn't hear Logan get out of the vehicle. I didn't hear his footsteps. I just felt a hand close around my arm — not rough, not exactly gentle, but certain in a way that moved through me before my brain caught up to it — and then I was walking.
The SUV door closed behind me. The air smelled like cedar and something warmer underneath, something I kept almost naming and then didn't.
"Did someone push you around again?"
"No." I shook my head. "The Remington elders — they were good to me. They made Keaton and Alora leave."
A pause.
"That was enough for them."
The way he said it wasn't quite a question, wasn't quite a statement. It landed somewhere in between, and I didn't know what to do with the landing, so I didn't answer. He looked out the window. After a moment, he gave Damon a look I didn't fully catch and then the vehicle was moving, and I didn't ask where we were going.
I didn't have the energy to ask. I just let the city move past the window and tried to get the counting back.
I noticed the bakery only when we stopped in front of it.
The building was narrow, sandwiched between two taller ones, the kind of place you'd walk past a hundred times without registering it existed. But I knew it — not because I'd been here, because I hadn't. Because Miriam Remington had mentioned it once, offhandedly, the way she mentioned things she assumed were common knowledge. That little place on Selkirk, the one that never takes walk-ins. Incredible mille-feuille, if you can get a table.
I'd smiled and nodded and added it to the long list of things that existed for other people.
Logan was already at the door.
He looked back at me. "You planning to stay in the car?"
I wasn't in the car anymore, I thought. But I followed him inside.
The owner was European — Belgian, maybe, with the hands of someone who worked in grams and degrees. He shook Logan's hand with both of his, the way you greeted someone whose business you were glad to have, and didn't ask what we wanted. He simply turned and led us through the front room and through a back door and into the kitchen.
Empty. All of it — the marble counters, the stations, the racks of cooling molds. Every apprentice, gone. The whole working space cracked open for us like it had just been waiting.
I looked around and said nothing, because what was there to say. Right. Of course. Because this is apparently how that works.
I was still processing that when Logan pulled an apron off the hook by the counter and tied it behind his back.
Then he picked up a piping bag.
I stared at him for a full three seconds. He walked into the wrong room, was my first thought. Then I watched his hands — the way they moved over the counter, deliberate and focused — and I understood that no, this was completely intentional, and I had no idea what was happening.
The thing about having a competitive streak is that it turns into a specific kind of discomfort when you don't know what the game is. I was standing in the middle of a professional kitchen with an Alpha who was apparently making a cake, and no one had explained the rules to me, and I had nowhere to put that.
I started walking.
Not toward anything. I moved along the edges of the room — past the display cases, past the framed certificates, past a shelf of copper molds that probably had names I didn't know. I wasn't looking at any of it. I was just moving, because standing there and watching him felt weird, and at least if I was moving I looked like I had a reason.
The smell of brown butter hit me somewhere around the second wall. Sugar, and something warming underneath it. I stopped in front of a display case and stared at a row of glazed tarts without seeing them.
Some amount of time passed.
"Emery."
The way he said my name was different from how other people said it. I decided not to think about it further and walked back toward the counter.
I stopped when I saw the cake.
Eighteen inches across. Maybe more. The base was plain, but around it — wound chime flowers made from sugar, each petal shaped like a small bell, facing upward. The color ran from gold at the outer edge to rose-red to deep violet at the center. I'd seen that color progression before. Wind chime trees: gold when they first bloom, rose as they peak, purple-red as they start to let go. Someone had paid attention to that.
And on top, tilted at forty-five degrees, angled toward the ceiling —
A pair of MMA gloves.